


Piercing the Veil

by Vulgarweed



Category: Lord of the Rings - Tolkien, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works, TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Comedy, Horror, M/M, Missing Scene, Worst-Case Scenario Challenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:56:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being powerful, being undead, and being two of the Nine Fingers of the Black Hand isn't all its cracked up to be; two of Sauron's *cough* most terrible servants are having a rough night of it in Mirkwood. Mild violence, language, and whiffs o' Wraithslash. Written for Slodwick's Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook challenge ("How to Ram a Barricade").</p>
            </blockquote>





	Piercing the Veil

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Murasaki99 on the occasion of her birthday! The names of the Nazgûl here are those used by Khazar-Khum and Murasaki99 in stories of theirs (I hope we've shared a brain enough that they don't mind)—except for Khamûl, the Professor never named them himself.

It had seemed to be wise counsel at the time.

The Eldar of the forest seemed to have mastered the art of appearing suddenly from within and behind and even beneath the trees, but they were no match for the daughters of the Great Darkness, Mother Ungoliant in the places where the eight-legged brood dwelt in large numbers and grew fat among the hangings in their webs—these anti-cocoons from which no living thing will emerge.

Their eternal hunger and the tangled webs they wove, trapping the unwary and strangling the trees, had provided Dol Guldur deep in Mirkwood with a certain kindred sensibility. There was another barrier for the Valar’s bastards to cross, and a cover of soothing, fertile darkness in which the chill magic of the Úlairi flourished and stretched out its shadow.

Yet Herumor remembered the whisperings that were dreaded even in his company's eldritch halls: that even as Ungoliant herself had never _served_ the great Morgoth Bauglir, and had in fact done battle with him for the Elven jewels and nearly overcome him, her children did not _serve_ the Lord of the Rings, did not answer to him. Where they came from and where they wished to go, even Morgoth Himself had not known. There was, at best, an incidental agreement of purpose. The intelligences, the understandings, the purposes of the Spiders, such as they were, were not those of the rebel Ainur, nor of their servants. There was no common language.

Behind him in the night forest now was a light painful to Herumor’s eyes and a smell that wound its way up his nose and started to leak fear into his mind. For all the woodsmanship of the Eldar of the Greenwood, they were not fond of the Spiders, nor of the wolves—and least of all of the Úlairi themselves--and there were times when a young one might panic and forget that the tool that served them best (fire) in the circle of a camp or on the end of a staff was not so useful when allowed to escape control. Say, for example, on the end of an arrow.

Or the butt-end of a pipeweed stick dropped on the dry wood-bed in fear at the sound of a rustle or a growl or…

_Shreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!_

Herumor’s black horse (of uncertain provenance but for the Rohirric on his papers having been crudely scratched out) reared up and nearly tossed him at the alarm cry of one of the wraith’s own comrades. _Stupid beast ought to be used to it by now,_ Herumor thought. _Especially that one._ Gobardon Agnen had never quite got _all_ the hang of this Nazgûl business and Herumor thought (unfairly) that he would be afraid of his own shadow if he actually cast one.

But when Gobardon came tearing into the clearing, unhorsed and wild-eyed, Herumor could see the cause for his panic was quite real. The flames on the other wraith’s ragged black robes hurt his eyes and confused his mind, but he kept his head long enough to mutter, “Sssstop, drop, and roll, just like we practiced.”

“Oh yes,” the other sighed and did just that. Now at least he was just dirty, not burning. “Herumor!” he gasped without breath. “You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. There are Elves to the South of us, Spiders to the West, and flames to the North. We must flee. We _must.”_

“Any sign of Khamûl?” Herumor’s hopes weren’t high.

“Last seen having a serious Talk with the Black Captain over the palantír. We won’t see him again this night.”

“Fuckity,” said Herumor in Adûnaic. Yes, yes, He-Who-Was-More-Equal-Than-the-Others had achieved a mighty victory in Arnor, and won the prize of Minas Morgul in Formerly-Ithilien, and even got his own pet King of Men to torture. That was all just a bit much for ol Number Two, Khamûl, who'd been trying to compete for millennia and knew Dol Guldur just couldn't. His wraithly pride did battle with his accursed desires nightly for the cold, only-metaphorical heart of the Witch-King--who for his part seemed interested mostly in redecorating his tower. He got to prop up his steel boots back in comfortable Mordor, from time to time deigning to issue some prissy directive or other.

“We have to go now,” wailed the younger wraith, as orange light began to stain the skies above the tops of the trees in one direction, Sindarin whisperings came from another, and in yet a third was the marching of way, way too many legs. (Herumor still was not sure after centuries if the Spiders could or would eat his unwholesome kind, but he wasn’t about to seek firm proof either way.)

With a sigh he reached down a sharp gauntlet and helped Gobardon Agnen climb up behind him onto the black stallion, who shuddered and objected—for though the wraiths themselves had little weight, their armor certainly did, and two pairs of spurs were always worse than one.

Herumor kicked lightly, and the horse reared up, and then Herumor shivered just a little at the chill reach and clutch of Gobardon’s arms around his waist and a whispered murmur of those grey lips at his ear. (For it is little known among the other peoples of Arda that although the Nazgûl are invisible to the natural peoples of the land, they are not hidden from each other’s sight nor other senses and may indeed find one another quite fair to their otherworldly gaze. It is perhaps for the best that most among the natural races of Arda have little desire to contemplate this too closely.)

For the curses, the kicking, and the sheer barely-concealed dread of its now-plural riders, the black stallion formerly of Rohan, who had the blood of the Meara in his veins (and a bit of it on Herumor’s spurs), surged forward in fierce equine pride through the darkened wood. He was careful to stumble as much as possible and catch the heads and hoods of his fell riders on low-hanging branches every chance he got. But balk he did not and would not.

Until he saw the solid wall of spider-web ahead.

Spun of cold steel it seemed, and silver, catching the pale starlight and reflecting it back with a sickly pallor. It was meant to trap anything that came by this road, and it was woven of clammy, shining threads thick as rope, bound between stout and ancient trees, and reaching up nearly to their tops, far above the heads of horse and riders.

Behind them, danger advanced. There was smoke, and crackling, and Elven cursing, and arachnid hissing.

There was wraithly hissing immediately behind Herumor, and those strong, slender ethereal arms clutched him fiercely.

“Hold on,” Herumor said, stopping just short of “tight,” as Gobardon had that covered already. The horse shied, and hopped, and danced, and did everything short of stopping dead, having a sinking equine feeling about what he was being asked to do. Herumor leaned forward and made sure the horse’s noseplate held fast, and thanked Melkor’s restless spirit once again for the metal spikes on the horse’s armour—it wasn’t the first time Sauron’s favourite aesthetic motif had proved practical.

“Where’s the weak point?” Gobardon asked.

“I doubt there is one, but it’s either at the fastenings or at the middle. I suspect we should not risk running so close to the trees. The center it is.”

“How fast do we need to go?”

“As fast as this mighty steed, prince of horses, can race,” Herumor said, imagining flattery could never hurt.

“Well, that should be swift indeed,” Gobardon said, catching on. “For I know not if creatures such as us are to the taste of the Spiders, but the flesh of a mortal horse must be a feast to their kind.”

“Down now,” Herumor muttered as the horse backed up uncomfortably close to the edge of the wood to get himself a good running start. “Sword drawn; we may try to help by cutting.”

“Certainly.”

The ground, the wood canopy, the black mane before the wraiths all went blurry as the charger charged; only the silver wall of spider-stuff remained in terrible focus, coming up at them with horrific speed.

“DUCK YOUR HEAD!” Herumor shouted as he thrust his sword forward into the sticky strands that snapped and curled around him, around the horse’s face and chest, around his companion. He slashed downwards and up, forward and through, as the force of the impact started to bring massive branches of ancient trees down all around them and upon them. “DON’T STOP!” he yelled at the horse, kicking him forward, although the horse never had any intentention of doing any such thing; he only bucked and stamped to clear the worst of the webbing from his hooves.

The horse got through fine, in fact, and pounded away towards the fortress feeling much, much less burdened. The two Ringwraiths did not, at least not for the time they spent crawling out from under the branches that would have killed any creature not already undead and the webbing that bound them in such maddening ways they hacked at each other’s robes and hair as well without realizing it.

When they had cut themselves free, the clearing had already erupted in a brawling mass of Spiders and Elves who hacked and bit at each other to the advantage of their mutual enemy, Fire. Unnoticed now, and glad for the lack of witnesses to their humiliation, the two Nazgûl, still veiled in spider-silk and crowned with jutting twigs, crept at a rapid foot-pace towards Dol Guldur, for a much safer vantage point to watch Mirkwood burn.

  
~fin~


End file.
